Cornelius, maybe you've seen him on HBO's Reverb concert series. Or you think of him as the fellow involved in the recent two-way remix project with that nice packaging, and more relevant here, the fellow signed to Matador Records in the US who can't speak much English and therefore requires the use of a translator for this interview. Let's hope the communication didn't get too skewed, a la the whole November '99 Hillary Clinton mishap with Arafat's wife. Date this thing shortly before Cornelius's set at Coachella '99, a two-day festival in Southern California.
Soundproof: Do you think, from earlier on, your playing in a lot of cover bands is why you play everything now, you know, the whole kitchen sink routine?
Cornelius: I guess that’s definitely one of them, I’ve always been interested in music from all sorts of places, going into record stores and just browsing around everything.
Soundproof: (the microphone has some trouble at this point) Mic check.
Cornelius: (laughter)
Soundproof: I wanted to ask about ‘ape kill ape’; apes kill apes right?
Cornelius: Yeah, its disapppointing.
Soundproof: Too bad.
Cornelius: I guess that is the ideal that everybody is looking for, but the bonobo, it goes and kills all…yeah.
Soundproof: The remix project: was that the label’s idea or your idea as an artist?
Cornelius: I guess it was my idea; Phantasma was the first album to come abroad, and after Phantasma came out a lot of people started calling me up. From Europe and America, asking me to do remixes, and then I ended up with just a bunch of remixes lying around, so I thought maybe why not put it together into a form. It so happens that I liked a lot of the artists that asked me to do the remixes…
Soundproof: And that’s why the remix project went two ways as opposed to the traditional one-off remix album?
Cornelius: Exactly. So I asked them to do a return favor or whatever.
Soundproof: So are you planning on working with Rob Schneider again?
Cornelius: If I want to; definitely, definitely a favorite band of mine.
Soundproof: What possessed you to release the Bill Wyman stuff, have you always been a fan?
Cornelius: In Trattoria, there’s a guy who’s a complete Rolling Stones freak and he wanted to release a Rollign Stones album, but with licensing and so on it didn’t work out. But it so happened that Bill Wyman’s record was available, and it was called Monkey Grip, so you know, ape, monkey grip and so on. And so I said definitely, why not do it.
Soundproof: So do you dig the whole ‘Japanese schoolgirl’ thing? That’s what we get here a lot in the states. Or something.
Cornelius: (laughter) I guess I’m not really into it, because it’s getting too obscure. They’re wearing heels like this big and they’ve got so much makeup on that they look like some monster coming out of some mountain or something so it’s getting a bit too much.
Soundproof: We’ve got Britney Spears here. Her video features that whole routine, but Americanized. Do you like Britney Spears, you know, Baby One More Time?
Cornelius: I guess the Japanese young high school girls aren’t like that anymore, it’s more weird and gross and disgusting.
Soundproof: I liked it before. So do you go with nature or technology?
Cornelius: Both.
Soundproof: TV or movies?
Cornelius: Both, again -- but I like movies and I like soundtracks, I wish I could do a soundtrack for a movie.
Soundproof: Movies and monsters…What did you think of the abominable American version of Godzilla from 1998?
Cornelius: Horrible.
Soundproof: Matthew Broderick, yeah. Who do you want to see perform tonight?
Cornelius: Morrissey, I might also be playing with Beck. I want to see Nightmares on Wax, Gil Scott Heron.
Soundproof: Who don’t you want to see?
Cornelius: No one in particular.
Soundproof: I don’t want to see Tool.
Cornelius: I don’t know Tool all that well.
Soundproof: You don’t want to know Tool, you don’t want to remix Tool. Wretched American music.
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